Arts and politics - Presenting politics

?7% of the population of this country owns 84% of the wealth.? This statistic, taken from The Economist magazine in 1966, gave 7:84 Theatre Company Scotland its name and reveals the company?s socialist roots and ethos, writes Lorenzo Mele.

7:84 was first established in England in 1971, and in 1973 a sister company of the same name was formed in Scotland by playwright and director, John McGrath. The Scottish company?s inaugural production was ?The Cheviot, the Stag and The Black, Black Oil?. This piece, still talked of with affection today, was radical in its content and form and also in its touring pattern ? taking a political piece around village halls and community centres all over Scotland. The production broke new ground by chronicling the history of capital-driven oppression and the exploitation experienced by working-class Scots through three centuries, a history that Scottish children were not being taught about in school. The play?s first work-in-progress performance was at a socio-cultural conference in Edinburgh in 1973, which perhaps underlines the fact that political theatre is often associated with non-theatrical occasions; it exists to serve a purpose beyond the purely artistic. This, in turn, can lead to the criticism that a quality artistic experience is not at the heart of political theatre ? that too often it will be unsubtle and will fail to entertain.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the company used a direct, polemical style of writing incorporating populist mediums such as live music and song. Content focused on working-class struggles to resist oppressive practices, reflective of the mass struggles between unions and employers that marked the period. However, with the advent of the Conservative Government in 1979, with its aggressive anti-union platform, the company was forced to change its approach ? a change partly forced upon it by the Scottish Arts Council, which withheld funding until McGrath was replaced.

In the late 1980s, the company?s approach to political theatre was redefined to match the changes in the wider social climate, and work was developed and produced along the ?personal as political? model. Identity politics, particularly gender and sexuality, came to the fore in newly commissioned scripts (?Twilight Shift? by Jackie Kay, ?The Saltwound? by Stephen Greenhorn) and also in plays that did not deal directly with Scottish experiences, such as ?Antigone?, ?Angels in America? and ?The Grapes of Wrath?. While this new direction helped to revitalise the company and brought in a new, more middle-class audience, it also blurred distinctions between 7:84 and other new writing companies that were emerging in Scotland at the time. The Traverse theatre and TAG theatre company (to name just two) were developing texts from writers keen to engage with topical issues, and work was being developed by 7:84 that could have equally been developed by other companies.

7:84?s challenge has been to run a political theatre company that is distinct from socially aware companies whilst not being didactic and retaining the sophistication of form and delivery developed through the 1990s. The company?s next main house show, ?Private Agenda?, is a documentary play, with actors performing a text compiled from interviews with frontline public service workers and campaigners, to create a snapshot of the state of the public services in Scotland in 2004. Additionally, our Outreach and Community Action Department works with marginalised groups to create theatre pieces performed by the participants themselves. The act of empowering and putting these people on stage is itself political, but recently the company has utilised Brazilian practitioner Augusto Boal?s Legislative Theatre in taking these productions and performers into the Scottish Parliament to work with policy formers on developing or reviewing legislation.

The challenge is to make political theatre that is both accessible in form (to people who might see only one or two plays a year) and, where appropriate, humourous enough to ensure that ideology does not override John McGrath?s main objective: a good night out.